The Rejected True Heiress (Liora and Callum) novel Chapter 526

With brisk, long steps that had me nearly jogging to keep up, the guard took me down two corridors and up a half flight of stairs. He knew the patrols well enough to know how to avoid other guards, so we didn’t run into anyone along the way.

My mother’s door was the same as I remembered it. He stopped there and looked at me without saying anything.

“Five minutes,” I whispered.

He nodded, and I pushed the door open and slipped inside.

The room reeked underneath the pungent bowl of herbs sitting on the nightstand. It was worse than the last time, no longer body odor and unwashed sheets, but decay and sickness. I held my hand to my nose, my eyes already watering, and stepped forward.

I could see my mother’s form lying on her back in the center of the bed through the thin curtain draped around the posters.

“Mom?” I whispered.

No answer. I reached out and pulled the curtains aside, and my hand dropped to my side, my eyes widening.

She looked smaller than I’d ever seen her. Her hair, once beautiful, her crowning glory as she’d always called it, was patchy and scraggly and bald in most places. Her eyes were sunken into dark caverns in her skull and her hands looked like those of a ninety year old woman as they rested on the sheets—pale, papery skin, bulging knuckles and veins.

My heart shattered. I reached out with a shaking hand and touched her shoulder, wincing at the feeling of bone underneath the thin skin. She was ice cold to the touch.

“Mama,” I said quietly.

Nothing.

I pulled my hand back and studied her. Her chest was rising and falling, just barely, her breath a little rattly. She was alive, but there was no telling how long that would last. From the looks of her, she was on death’s doorstep. No longer a queen, but a husk kept confined to a bed.

My jaw tightened so much I felt my teeth grind.

He nodded once, then shut the door and locked it again.

I took my boots off this time, laid down, and shut my eyes.

The next morning, I woke to the sound of bells tolling in the distance. They jolted me out of sleep, and I found myself in a sunwashed room that might have been pleasant were it not for the bars. The palace was bustling, the sounds of voices and furniture scraping echoing through the corridors.

I flopped back against my pillows and stared at the ceiling, scrubbing my hand over my face.

I’d survived the night. But now Ambrose was here, and the wedding was tonight.

I hoped I survived long enough to carry out the plan.